Tuesday, August 1, 2017

History Rewritten - 6

Native American culture has
been a great interest in my life for as long as I can recall. Here
in the shadows of the Smokies for the past forty years, I’ve tried to learn
about the Cherokee in particular. But
now, it is becoming clear that I have a lot of un-learning to do.

Myths of the (Ancient) Cherokees

Living in this area, we often hear something to the effect that any and all native people of the Southern Appalachians were “Cherokee”
and that the Cherokees have been here “since time immemorial.”

Within a hundred miles of here, thousands of non-Cherokee
native people must be rolling in their graves at the notion that this is and
ALWAYS WAS the land of the Cherokee.
Fortunately, a new generation of scholars is telling a more complete
story about the early inhabitants of the Southern Appalachians. But it will take a long time to overcome a
century of sloppy storytelling and outright falsehoods.

The new insights on old times aren’t easy to sort out. Romanticized myths about the Cherokee past
will be exposed. In some cases,
perplexing questions must replace easy answers. And it will make a lot of
people uncomfortable.

Without too much effort, any good “googler” could dig up a
United Nations study discussing one scourge of modern life: the three-pronged global
network of crime involving human trafficking, drug distribution and the sale of
weapons. Going back three or four
hundred years, that same evil triumvirate was central to the interactions
between Native Americans and the new arrivals from Europe. The more I’ve tried to nail down the origins of
the “tribe,” the closer I am to asserting that “The Cherokees” came into
existence as a joint venture between native people and white colonists -
essentially a crime syndicate. A
mutually beneficial red-white partnership facilitated the movement of slaves,
whiskey and rifles.

Although I’m dangling that possibility out there, it will
take much more than a blog post or two to make the case for it. But strong evidence continues to mount for what I’m proposing and it is considerably more
plausible than the stories folks have swallowed without question for the past
century.

Mistaken Identity in a Crucial Document

To keep things manageable this post will focus on one, and
just one, of the most crucial documents in (so-called) Cherokee history and how
it has been misappropriated to support a false rendition of events in the
Southern Appalachians.

A Virginia trader’s 1674 letter has been excerpted and
reprinted in dozens, if not hundreds, of books and articles. Quite often, it is described as an account of
his attempt to establish trade with the Cherokees living west of the Blue
Ridge. One year earlier, the merchant
and politician Abraham Wood had sent James Needham and Gabriel Arthur westward
to explore the mysterious backcountry beyond the mountains.

Here’s the first problem: nowhere in the long letter do we
find the term “Cherokee.” As a matter of
fact, if ANYONE was talking about “the Cherokees” in 1674, there’s no written
record of it. The letter does go into
considerable detail about Needham and Arthur’s adventures with the
Tomahittans. About a hundred years ago,
one scholar jumped to the conclusion that “Tomahittan” was simply another name
for “Cherokee.” The association stuck.

But Tennessee archaeologists Kneberg and Lewis build a
strong case for identifying the Tomahittans as Yuchi Indians, rather than
Cherokees. Indeed, in 1727, a delegation
of Cherokee visiting Charleston referred to the Tomahittans as old enemies of
their allies, the Yamasee.

Nevertheless, many writers have found it convenient to
equate the Tomahittans with the Cherokees.
It fills in a missing piece of the Cherokee puzzle, and satisfies the
hunger to know more about their earliest history. But that assumption obscures the more likely scenarios underway in the 17th century.

Perspective is everything in understanding Abraham Wood’s letter. Too often, it is presented as the first
account of English traders visiting a trans-Appalachian “Cherokee” town. Viewed in a broader context, the letter
yields greater meaning. Complex
interactions were in play between English traders, planters, colonial leaders
and investors in London. Carolina and
Virginia were vying for power and influence.
Spanish missions in La Florida, from the Atlantic to the Gulf Coast
affected things throughout the Southeast, and to a lesser extent, French
influence to the Northwest was a factor.
Conflicts in the north were causing the migration of various tribes to
the south, and as the Indian slave trade expanded, some native groups exploited
the opportunity while others became targets of red and white slave
catchers.

Frontier Traders and Indian Slaves

Colonel Abraham Wood (1610-1682) was an English fur trader
in colonial Virginia, based at the frontier outpost Fort Henry on the
Appomattox River in present-day Petersburg (south of Richmond). Fort Henry was a checkpoint, the only point
in Virginia where Indians and whites were permitted (by law) to cross over to each
other’s territory. Wood enjoyed a
near-monopoly in the Indian-trade, buying and selling with the nearby
Appomattocs and other native people living beyond the bounds of the colony.

The year Wood wrote his letter, 1674, was the birth
year of John Lawson and William Byrd II, authors of A New Voyage to Carolina (1709) and The History of the Dividing Line betwixt Virginia and North Carolina, Run in the Year of Our Lord 1728, respectively.

That
these two books are counted among the most significant early accounts of life
in the Carolina backcountry, underscores the value of the Wood letter, coming a
generation or two before the works by Lawson and Byrd. The changes during that span of time were
momentous.

From 1680 to 1730, in
addition to the commerce in deer hides, furs, and rum, the Indian slave trade
was a mainstay in the economy of proliferating Carolina settlements. During that period, countless thousands of
men, women, and children of dozens of Indian nations were enslaved by the
English colonists, seized by them in raids or purchased for the slave markets
from Indians who had captured them from other tribes, usually at the
instigation of the English. At first,
the slave traders pretended humanitarian goals, explaining that buying Indians
prisoners saved them from the worse fate of being tortured by their
captors. But the traders soon dropped
all pretense and, deliberately pitting one tribe against another with offers of
guns, powder, and cheap English textiles and manufactured goods, encouraged
Indian slave-catching raids against weaker tribal rivals and intertribal wars
waged mostly for captives to sell to the whites. On top of the waves of epidemics that swept
through the Indian villages, the destructive impact of the slave trade disoriented numerous nations and engulfed the
Indian world from the Southern Atlantic seaboard to the Mississippi river to
dislocation and turmoil. (500 Nations, by Alvin Josephy, p. 223)

One scholar estimates that by 1715, Carolina had exported
more slaves than it had imported.

Trade Routes to the West

In the 1650s and 1660s, Wood himself had explored headwaters
of the Roanoke and James Rivers, and had even crossed the Blue Ridge to find
streams flowing toward the Ohio River.
When Needham and Arthur left Fort Henry in May 1673, Wood hoped they
could find an outlet to the Pacific Ocean.

Five weeks after leaving Fort Henry, Needham and Arthur
crossed paths with a roaming band of Tomahittans, who agreed to escort them
back to their town far to the southwest.
After a short stay at the village of the Occhonechee Indians (now
submerged by the Kerr Reservoir near the NC border), they proceeded along the
Indian Trading Path (the route later used for Interstate 85 through North
Carolina) crossing the Eno and the Yadkin Rivers before turning west and reaching
a foothill village, Sittaree, that may have been close to present-day
Morganton.

Located in south-central Virginia, the Occhonechee had
operated as middlemen in Abraham Wood’s Indian trade, a position that was
threatened by Needham and Arthur’s effort to establish direct contact with
native people to the west. Several
months later, near the Yadkin River, an Occhonechee hired for the expedition
murdered James Needham, to the dismay and horror of several Tomahittans in the
party.

Due to the eventual loss of Needham, Abraham Woods relied on
the testimony of Gabriel Arthur for most of the events described in his
letter. Arthur was probably an
indentured servant. He would spend
almost a full year among the Tomahittans. But sadly, much that he reported to
Woods was left out of the letter.
Curious as I am about these times, it is almost agonizing to read this
sentence from Wood:

And as brief as I can,
give a touch upon the heads of the material matter my man's memory could
retain, for he cannot write the greater pity, for should I insert all the
particulars it would swell to too great a volume and perhaps seem too tedious
to the courteous and charitable Reader, so I beg pardon for ignorant errors…

If only Colonel Wood had tested our patience with a great
volume of such tedium!!!

Beyond the Blue Ridge

The actual course of the expedition once it crossed the Blue
Ridge is impossible to trace with even an approximate degree of
confidence. What is indisputable,
though, is that the Tomahittans routinely travelled hundreds of miles away from
their trans-Appalachian home base. Recreating the route is complicated by
Arthur’s inability to take notes and by the passage of many months before he
shared his recollections with Abraham Wood.

Sitteree was described as “the last town of inhabitance and
not any path further until they came within two days’ journey of the
Tomahittans.” After leaving Sitteree,
Needham and Arthur took four days to reach the top of the Blue Ridge. Upon descending the western slope, they
travelled another ten days, crossing five rivers, while seeing “great store of
game all along, as turkeys, deer, elk, bear, wolf, and other vermin very tame.”

Finally, they reached the Tomahittans’ riverside town. The actual location is a matter of
debate. Perhaps it was on the French
Broad. Or the Little Tennessee. Or the
Hiwassee, or the Coosa (near Rome, GA), or the Chattahootchee (near
Gainesville, GA):

This town is seated on
the river side, having the cliffs of the river on the one side being very high
for its defence, the other three sides trees of two foot over, pitched on end,
twelve feet high, and on the tops scaffolds placed with parapets to defend the
walls and offend their enemies which men stand on to fight. Many nations of Indians
inhabit down this river, which runs west upon the salts which they are at war
with and to that end keep one hundred and fifty canoes under the command of
their fort. The least of them will carry twenty men, and made sharp at both
ends like a wherry for swiftness. This fort is four square, 300 paces over, and
the houses set in streets…

Raiding a Spanish Town

The Tomahittans had some knowledge of Spaniards living
downstream from their palisaded village:

Eight days' journey
down this river lives a white people who have long beards and whiskers and wear
clothing, and on some of the other rivers live a hairy people.

One Tomahittan had been taken captive (and then escaped) on
a trip to sell beaver pelts to the white men in the west. He travelled to Fort Henry a few months later,
where Abraham Wood was able to elicit some details about Tomahittan contact
with the Spaniards:

The Tomahittans have
about sixty guns. Not such locks as ours be, the steels are long and channelled
where the flints strike. The prisoner relates that the white people have a bell
which is six foot over which they ring morning and evening, and at that time a
great number of people congregate together and talk he knows not what. They
have many blacks among them, oysters and many other shellfish, many swine, and
cattle. Their building is brick. The Tomahittans have among them many brass
pots and kettles from three gallons to thirty. They have two mullato women. All
the white and black people they take they put to death…

This Spanish town alluded to here, and the Spanish town that
Gabriel Arthur would visit with a band of Tomahittan marauders, might have been
located anywhere from Saint Augustine on the Atlantic to Mobile Bay on the Gulf
of Mexico.

After his arrival at the Tomahittan village, Arthur expected
to spend a few weeks learning their language.
He probably had no idea that he would be travelling great distances with
them throughout the Southeast:

…they made preparation
for to manage the war, for that is the course of their living to forage, rob,
and spoil other nations. And the king commands Gabriel Arthur to go along with
a party that went to rob the Spaniards, promising him that in the next spring
he himself would carry him home to his master. Gabriel must now be obedient to
their commands. In the deplorable condition he was in was put in arms, gun,
tomahawk, and target, and so marched away with the company, being about fifty.

They travelled eight
days west and by south as he guessed and came to a town of Negroes, spacious
and great, but all wooden buildings. Here, they could not take anything without
being seen. The next day they marched along by the side of a great cart path,
and about five or six miles as he judged came within sight of the Spanish town,
walled about with brick and all brick buildings within. There he saw the
steeple wherein hung the bell which Mr. Needham gives relation of and heard it
ring in the evening.

Here they did not stay
but drew off and the next morning layed an ambush in a convenient place near
the cart path before mentioned and there lay almost seven days to steal for
their sustenance. The 7th day a Spaniard in a genteel habit, accoutered with
gun, sword, and pistol. One of the Tomahittans, spying him at a distance, crept
up to the path side and shot him to death. In his pocket were two pieces of
gold and a small gold chain, which the Tomahittans gave to Gabriel, but he
unfortunately lost it in his venturing as you shall hear by the sequel.

Here they hastened to
the Negro town where they had the advantage to meet with a lone Negro. After
him ran one of the Tomahittans with a dart in his hand, made with a piece of
the blade of Needham's sword, and threw it after the Negro, struck him through
between his shoulders so he fell down dead. They took from him some toys, which
hung in his ears, and bracelets about his neck, and so returned as
expeditiously as they could to their own homes.

Down the Savannah River to Port Royal

The object of their next raid is one that we can pinpoint,
north of the mouth of the Savannah River, inland from present-day Beaufort, SC. What we now refer to as Yamasees may have
occupied the area at that time. As it
would be with the Cherokees and many other native groups now familiar to us,
the Yamasees did not have a long lineage as a “tribe” but were an amalgamation
of remnants from earlier tribes and chiefdoms.

The Savannah River fits the description of the waterway (“Port
Royal river”) travelled by the Tomahittans on their way to Port Royal:

They rested but a
short time before another party was commanded out again and Gabriel Arthur was
commanded out again, and this was to Port Royal. Here he refused to go, saying
those were Englishmen and he would not fight against his own nation. He had
rather be killed. The King told him they intended no harm to the Englishmen,
for he had promised Needham at his first coming to him that he would never do
violence against any English more but their business was to cut off a town of
Indians which lived near the English. I but said Gabriel, what if any English
be at that town, a trading? The King swore by the fire which they adore as
their god they would not hurt them.

So they marched away
over the mountains and came upon the head of Port Royal river in six days. There they made perriaugers [sic] of bark and so passed down the stream with
much swiftness. Next, coming to a convenient place of landing, they went on
shore and marched to the eastward of the south, one whole day and part of the
night. At length, they brought him to the sight of an English house, and
Gabriel with some of the Indians crept up to the house side and listening what
they said, they being talking within the house, Gabriel heard one say, pox take
such a master that will not allow a servant a bit of meat to eat upon Christmas
day. By that means Gabriel knew what time of the year it was, so they drew off
secretly and hastened to the Indian town, which was not above six miles thence.

About break of day
stole upon the town. The first house Gabriel came to there was an Englishman.
He heard him say Lord have mercy upon me. Gabriel said to him run for your
life. Said he, which way shall I run? Gabriel replied, which way thou wilt they
will not meddle with you. So he ran and the Tomahittans opened and let him pass
clear. There they got the Englishman's knapsack with beads, knives, and other
petty truck in it. They made a very great slaughter upon the Indians and about
sunrise they heard many great guns fired off amongst the English. Then they
hastened away with what speed they could and in less than fourteen days arrived
at the Tomahittans with their plunder.

To the Heart of West Virginia

On his third long trip with the Tomahittans, Arthur almost
lost his life. The Monetons are known to
have occupied the Kanawha valley in the 17th century. Presumably, the “innumerable company of
Indians” were along the Ohio, downriver from the Kanawha:

Now the king must go
to give the Monetons a visit which were his friends, "mony" signifing
water and "ton" great in their language. Gabriel must go along with
him. They set forth with sixty men and travelled ten days due north and then
arrived at the Moneton town situated upon a very great river, at which place
the tide ebbs and flows. Gabriel swam in the river several times, being fresh
water. This is a great town and a great number of Indians belong to it, and in
the same river Mr. Batt and Fallam were upon the head of it as you read in one
of my first journals. This river runs northwest and out of the westerly side of
it goes another very great river about a day's journey lower where the
inhabitants are an innumerable company of Indians, as the Monetons told my man,
which is twenty day's journey from one end to the other of the inhabitance, and
all these are at war with the Tomahittans. When they had taken their leave of
the Monetons, they marched three days out of their way to give a clap to some
of that great nation, where they fell on with great courage and were as
couragously repulsed by their enemy.

And here Gabriel was
shot with two arrows, one of them in his thigh, which stopped his running, and
so was taken prisoner, for Indian valor consists most in their heels for he
that can run best is accounted the best man. These Indians thought this Gabriel
to be no Tomahittan by the length of his hair, for the Tomahittans keep their
hair close cut to the end so an enemy may not take an advantage to lay hold of
them by it. They took Gabriel and scoured his skin with water and ashes, and
when they perceived his skin to be white they made very much of him and admired
his knife, gun, and hatchet they took with him.

They gave those things
to him again. He made signs to them the gun was the Tomahittans' which he had a
desire to take with him, but the knife and hatchet he gave to the king. They
not knowing the use of guns, the king received it with great shows of
thankfulness for they had not any manner of iron instrument that he saw amongst
them. While he was there they brought in a fat beaver which they had newly
killed and went to swrynge [sic] it. Gabriel made signs to them that those
skins were good amongst the white people toward the rising sun. They would know
by signs how many such skins they would take for such a knife. He told them
four and eight for such a hatchet and made signs that if they would let him
return, he would bring many things amongst them. They seemed to rejoice at it
and carried him to a path that carried to the Tomahittans. They gave him
Rockahomony for his journey and so they departed, to be short.

Yet Another River Voyage

Details of the next expedition suggest that the Tomahittans
lived on a river that emptied into the Gulf of Mexico:

When he came to the
Tomahittans, the king had one short voyage more before he could bring in
Gabriel and that was down the river they live upon, in perriaugers [sic], to
kill hogs, bears, and sturgeon which they did incontinent by five days and
nights. They went down the river and came to the mouth of the salts where they
could not see land but the water was not above three feet deep hard sand. By
this means we know this is not the river the Spaniards live upon as Mr. Needham
thought. Here they killed many swine, sturgeon, and beavers and barbecued them,
so returned, and were fifteen days running up against the stream but no
mountainous land to be seen but all level.

Risky Return to Fort Henry

In May of 1674, Gabriel Arthur, the Tomahittan “king” and
eighteen more of his people loaded up their goods for a return to Fort
Henry. Their journey was uneventful
until the night they camped at the Sarrah (Uwharrie?) River and Arthur again
had a scrape with death:

There were but four
Occhonechee Indians there so that they did not adventure to attempt any violent
action by day….When it grew pretty late in the night the Occhonechees began to
work their plot and made an alarm by a hubbub, crying out the town was beset
with innumerable company of strange Indians. This put the town people into a
sudden fright, many being between sleeping and waking.

Away run the Tomahittans
and leave all behind them, and amongst the rest was Gabriel's two pieces of
gold and chain in an Indian bag. Away slipped Gabriel and the Spanish Indian
boy which he brought with him and hid themselves in the bushes.

After the Tomahittans
were gone the four Occhonechees, for there came no more to disturb them, made
diligent search for Gabriel. The moon shining bright Gabriel saw them, but he
lying under cover of the bushes could not be seen by those Indians.

In the morning the
Occhonechees, having missed of their acme, passed home and Gabriel came into
the town again and four of the Tomahittan's packs hired four Sarrah Indians to
carry them to Aeno. Here he met with my man I had sent out so long ago before
to inquire for news desparately sick of the flux. Here he could not get any to
go forth with his packs for fear of the Occhonechees, so he left them and
adventured himself with the Spanish Indian boy.

The next day came
before night in sight of the Occhonechee town undiscovered and there hid
himself until it was dark, and then waded over onto the island where the
Occhonechees are seated, strongly fortified by nature and that makes them so
insolent for they are but a handful of people, besides what vagabonds repair to
them it being a receptacle for rogues. Gabriel escaped clearly through them and
so waded out on this side and ran for it all night. Their food was
huckleberries, which the woods were full of at that time and on the 18th of
June with the boy arrived at my house, praise be to God for it.

On the Threshold of Major Changes

And that is about the extent of Colonel Abraham Wood’s
letter. Drastic changes were soon to
follow, all along the frontier and throughout the Southeast. In the course of Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676,
the Occhonechees joined the colonists for an attack on the Susquehannock people
farther to the north. But after that
battle, the colonists turned on the Occhonechees and decimated the tribe. By 1678, the Susquehannocks exacted revenge
against the Occohonechees, striking them at their island stronghold. Never regaining the power they once held, the
remaining Occhonechees retreated to a settlement on the Eno River near
Hillsborough, NC.

The Tomahittans, if they were Yuchis, also faced severe
pressures in the late 17th and early 18th century, even
as they strove for power in the Indian slave trade.
Conflicts with neighboring tribes forced the Yuchis out of their
territory west of the Appalachians and toward South Carolina and Georgia.

And, they would have a deadly encounter with a new group
emerging in the southern mountains, a coalition called the Cherokees.